


The Green Glen

by Sacrulen



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 00:07:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20218516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sacrulen/pseuds/Sacrulen
Summary: The Monastery in flames is their forest in winter.





	The Green Glen

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the last fight before the timeskip and based on sylvain in my BL run soloing a demonic beast and then getting healed from low HP by mercedes.

The creature in front of them was massive, and the buildings amongst the battlefield looked nary a speck against its thick scales and the rancid teeth in its gaping jaw that were flecked with bits of flesh from the Seiros Knights that had thrown themselves at it and perished. Even from the distance Mercedes was at the roar it gave made her quake and churned her stomach. There in the maws of the beast was Sylvain, the Lance that had killed his brother was in his hand and prepared to kill again. In the face of its hideous roar Sylvain thrust the lance into the roof of its mouth, his horse wildly bucking as he pulled on its reigns. The beast clenched its teeth down in response, shaking his head as its feet wavered and crashed to the ground defeated. It pulled Sylvain off his horse with a yell and Mercedes matched it with a gasp of her own, rushing forward now to help. She had learned offensive spells for this very moment, but in her panic had forgotten all about caution or fighting, she only knew that Sylvain was in danger, and that turned her body to action.

In the dust Sylvain was pulling his arm from the creature's mouth, it's clenching heavy now it had no will to hold its jaw up. His gauntlets had been thrown off by the monster's teeth, still mostly intact nearby Sylvain's figure. He was grasping at his arm, the school uniform he hadn't had time to change out of revealed underneath. It was shredded, as was his skin, and the blood was oozing out so rapidly that it made even Mercedes' stomach drop.

Mercedes landed at Sylvain's side and reached out her hands, shaking slightly at the sight of the injury. Sylvain's breaths kept her steady, hot in her ear as she summoned the sigil that would mend the skin and knit the tears under her watch. Through all of the yelling and clashing of steel that surrounded them, she focused on his breathing. When she finished, it was as though the injury had never happened, its only lingering memory the bloodstains on Sylvain's skin and clothes, and the spatters barely visible on his dark armour. Mercedes was ready to stand, to help Sylvain to his feet again, when he leaned his head gently against her shoulder.

He could have been sleeping, his eyes gently shut and his face so relaxed, and had she not seen the amount of blood he had just lost she would have believed it. She reached up gently to brush her fingers against his cheek, dusting hair out of his eyes, and his skin was as pale as she had ever seen it. Sylvain opened his eyes just a speck in response.

"Woozy," he muttered, and began to push himself up from where he rested, limbs heavy with ache.

In Mercedes' heart, she wished to pull him back down. If he had rested his head on her in the monastery, she would have stayed with him until the sky was awash with dusk and it became too cold for them to remain outside, and then she would have stayed with him still until they could see the stars and talk about constellations and moonlit memories from unhappy childhoods. Their hands would freeze in the cold night air entwined as the ivy on the walls by the dormitories, pulse by pulse in their wrists and fingers like the roots of the lilies grown in the heat of the greenhouse, intermingling and flowing as the water in the docks, lapping against the stone in the quiet soothing rhythm. Those hands had once pushed her up gently onto a horse, lingered around her waist to support her as it took its first few steps directed by her. Their laughs of joy had echoed against the stone and settled in the grass, where they sat and talked about the cake Mercedes had baked from a recipe her mother had taught her, and crumbs bounced off from the corner of Sylvain's mouth and rolled to a stop in the dirt, forgotten about the two of them, but proof that they had lived here.

Yearning for those serene moments that planted themselves in her time in the monastery could not change that she was here, right now fighting in its walls. The air was laden with screams and stabs and the sound of skin sundered, the life ripped from it in a moment ripe with cruelty. Soon, Sylvain would ride into the heart of it, feel its beat and fight to it. When it engulfed him it would rush to the back lines to drown Mercedes as the final protector of the worn stone steps that lead into her home, and she would be trampled into the ground. She only wished she could die near the ones she held so dear, that they may once more join hands in the bloodied soil and birth whatever flowers could bear to bloom.

"Be careful," she spoke, and her voice was just a wisp in the air between them. Sylvain was reattaching his gauntlet to his arm in a hurry, brows furrowed while he struggled to close clasps with his other armoured hand. Mercedes reached over without thinking, her fingers mindful and able as she connected the clasps for him. As she worked, she felt something cold against her cheek, steel against skin. Sylvain reached out to touch her, as she had him before.

"You be careful too," he said, and she nodded, for it was all she could do. The two of them knew that on this day, of all days, they would have to be far from careful. They had stayed at the monastery knowing it would be a battlefield of unavoidable sacrifice and loss. Weak wishes for caution were words laying nothing but the hope that, once the trampled flowers and grass here had life again, they could sit in the monastery once more, that there was a future for these walls and the fates of these two souls that were bent towards each other by mere chance.

With that, Sylvain pulled himself onto his horse once more with only the slightest grunt of pain escaping him, and galloped towards the fire raging before them.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote all of this at work sorry if its not great but also sylvain/mercie is a very good pair so i gotta make that content yknow


End file.
